adventures
23
Dec 14
Let’s talk about this guy
Do you notice the problem of symmetry in the following photo?
The pilot comes on to say this curtain — and that’s basically what it is, think of the heaviest curtain you’ve ever seen in a 1960s-70s time capsule home and you’re pretty close — is regarded by the FAA as an essential piece of equipment. And it would need to be replaced.
“Those first class folks don’t need to know you’re back there,” basically.
This after four hours of driving, rain and the mindless inanity of the TSA.
One blue shirt, I promise this is a true story, said to me “We’re just a little short handed tonight is all.”
A guy with a badge in a blue shirt said this to me in the world’s busiest airport on the night before Christmas Eve.
After 20 minutes or so of waiting for my freedom rub I eschewed the silliness of the whole thing, figuring, “Hey, at least the mysterious backscatter disease will get here faster than these people.”
In that time, people are just telling them “Oh, I’m 75,” and they get passed right through. There is a woman who has a singular job, yelling, in vain as it turns out, for opt outs. She puts her whole soul into it, bleating out her nasally phrase every six minutes or so, whether anyone comes or not.
And did you know a handkerchief can stymie the new security equipment?
I learned that safety tidbit tonight, talking with another exasperated blue shirt who was so decidedly going through the motions you wanted to ask him how far away his supervisor was just then.
So, yeah, this was what you then wanted to see for an hour:
Which is not fair. I timed it. The elapsed time from this gentleman bringing the new essential curtain onto the plane until he put his tools away was just over 14 minutes. The delay caused by it, mind you, was about an hour. This on top of a scheduling delay because of mid-air logistics elsewhere. Also, there’s weather coming in.
And this thing is broken. We were just about the first ones on the plane and saw it hanging dangerously close to failure, threatening to let the two classes of passengers mix without regard to proper aeronautical decorum. And so they took it down, the announcement was made and they scrounged up another from somewhere. Meaning there’s a room in the airport with these things in them.
Somehow, this is how you know you aren’t in the Matrix. That would just sort of pop right into place without you every consciously realizing why, the glitch in the Matrix from which you would benefit. Not us, though, not tonight.
It was decided, at one point, that this was a weight-bearing curtain. Why else could it be essential? And if that doesn’t make you want to drive everywhere, you’re a braver traveler than I.
But let’s talk about this guy. Everyone is staring at him. He’s struggling with the essential equipment. There’s a flight attendant holding this flashlight. Passengers are trying to “help.” The captain, who clearly has places to be, has come back to inspect the progress. And this poor guy knows everyone is watching him and they all want to be anywhere but on this tarmac, still. And he would like to have Christmas too.
I feel for the guy.
Meanwhile:
But we made it. One more destination safely reached. More lovely people to see. More snacks and Christmas cheer to pace ourselves on. One more misuse of the word “legendary.”
“Sit back, relax and enjoy our legendary Delta cabin service.”
Tell me another one, Santa.
13
Dec 14
A standard rambling Saturday of fun and memories
Every so often we have to make Allie, The Black Cat, famous on the Internet. This morning she was posing so patiently in the sun. She doesn’t mind the actual camera, but today I had the phone and she does not care for the phone in her face. Who can explain cats? She didn’t mind so much today, though, I guess because of the warm sun, but who can explain cats?
We watched the Army-Navy game. We attended one a few years ago, it was a great, chilly day and it is a game that everyone should go to at least once. (We want to go back.) You get a fair amount out of the experience watching the game on TV, CBS has done a nice job with it over the years.
To see the track athletes run the game ball onto the field and to watch the flyovers in person is a different thing. You’ve probably never seen the “prisoner exchange” of returning cadets and middies to their own sides after a student exchange program at home. Television doesn’t often show you the young men and women sworn into the service at the game and it doesn’t allow you to talk to graduates of both academies. For all the care that CBS gives that game, you just can’t absorb it all from the screen.
To watch the cadets march on, or to watch the teams sing their schools’ alma maters — my favorite college tradition of all — that’s an in-person experience you need. Here’s my video from 2011, shot on my first iPhone. It looks fuzzy after a few downloads and uploads from service to service, but it offers a nice little stadium view:
Here are some of the photos I took from our 2011 trip.
Of course, the hype videos always play better at home. You can hear them better. These were my favorites today:
More were collected for you here.
I’ve always cheered for Navy — the Department of the Navy was important in my childhood world — but two years ago, watching that late Army turnover, I softened up. The Black Knights were about to score late and break what was then a 10-game losing streak to the Middies. But they fumbled inside the 20 and I decided, about 40 seconds into the video here, that no rivalry should ever have more than a three-game losing streak. Everyone should know what it feels like to beat the other guys once in their career.
But it was not to be then, or today, of course. Navy has won 13 in a row, but Army is getting better.
I do enjoy the Army-Navy game.
Things to read … because there are other sports to enjoy.
The headline ruins this great high school basketball story:
Your team has not suffered like the Climax-Fisher Knights.
No matter how Raider-y or 76ers-esque your program is, it has not endured their unique brand of pain. Even Prairie View, the Division I-AA football team that lost 80 straight games during the 1990s, has technically suffered a shorter string of defeats than the Climax-Fisher girls basketball team, which finally broke its four-year losing streak Tuesday despite incredibly unfavorable odds.
That’s a happy finish.
I remember covering the accident that started this story years ago. It was probably one of the last stories I did before I moved to KARN in Little Rock. It was a terrible accident, to be sure. Dangling power lines killed a 7-year-old and changed a 4-year-old boy’s life forever. But this story is thrilling to read today. Good for him. Ward Webb lost his feet at age 4, but the Mountain Brook linebacker never says ‘I can’t’:
Mountain Brook football coach Chris Yeager remembers the early days of watching Ward Webb train with other players.
As teens sprinted up and down stadium steps for conditioning, Yeager remembers, they told Webb to go to the side and use the handrails.
Webb, who lost his feet at age 4 and uses prosthetic legs, refused.
“He wants to be like everybody else,” the coach said. “He’s falling down those steps and that’s just typical Ward. He absolutely believes he can do anything anybody else can do. I’ve been coaching him for 3½ years, and I have never heard Ward Webb say, ‘I can’t.’”
This is a neat concept. Not sure if I’d want to work there, but I’d read the product: A newspaper and a hotel, all in one. If you’re interested, here it is now.
St. Patrick’s is beautiful. Immediately below are a few of the pictures I’ve taken on visits to Manhattan over the years. The cleaning, though, has done wonders. St. Patrick’s unveils its immaculate facelift
This is an interesting visual mashup, and it leads to some spooky results. Battle of Nashville Then & Now is worth seeing, and the bigger your screen, the better.
In elementary school, during the third grade, let’s say, we buried a time capsule. It seemed a very big deal at the time, of course. I think it was a garbage bag-lined ice chest or something like that. And possibly they dug it up sometime later that night after we all left school. But we took it seriously, because it was very serious. It would be important when they dug it up in 50 years. All of this has come to mind a few times since, and now I wonder if anyone knows about it, if anyone remembers where it is or even cares. Were there 10 or 15 such time capsules buried on that playground? And did they dig it all up when that school built the big gym next to it? All of that is boring. This is amazing: Time capsule found at Massachusetts Statehouse:
Crews removed a time capsule dating back to 1795 on Thursday from the granite cornerstone of the Massachusetts Statehouse, where historians believe it was originally placed by Revolutionary War luminaries Samuel Adams and Paul Revere among others.
The time capsule is believed to contain items such as old coins and newspapers, but the condition of the contents is not known and Secretary of State William Galvin speculated that some could have deteriorated over time.
Officials won’t open the capsule until after it is X-rayed at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to determine its contents. The X-ray is scheduled for Sunday.
Time capsules are fascinating things. Who came up with this idea? And why can’t I open them for people?
We went for ice cream last night. One of those places where you drive over, park, walk up to the window and order under the humming neon lights. There’s a list of the ice cream flavors of the day, and the flavors are always changing. This is a challenge for me. Occasionally I find something I really like, but it is never there twice.
Tonight we pulled up about a half hour before the place closed and the guy at the window, Matt, knew it. He was older than the usual high schooler working there and he knew that too. The Yankee ordered her usual. I hemmed and hawed and agonized.
What is the Oreo cheesecake like? I asked.
“It tastes like cheesecake … with Oreos,” Matt said.
He gave me a sample. He was correct. I ordered it.
It was good. I’ll probably never see it offered there again.
1
Nov 14
Callaway Twilight 10K
I got to hug my lovely bride today, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As is now apparently our way, we find things to do online and then convince each other to do them. That’s how we started doing triathlons and that’s why we did a half ironman relay recently and that’s why we ran a 10K today.
There’s a 5K we did on campus a month or two ago with a friend. She said she liked it. The Yankee liked it. So I looked around for other races, being wary of how far I’m wiling to drive a car to run a distance I can do in my neighborhood. There it was, the Callaway Gardens Twilight 10K, held just over the border into Georgia.
The premise is you get to run around the pretty place and see the Fantasy In Lights Christmas show before it is open to the public. Twilight is a misnomer, but who cares. So we signed up, our friend bailed out because “Brrr it is cold and I’m from New Jersey.” So it was just the two of us, which was fine.
We made our way to Callaway after lunch today — and by after lunch I mean I ate in the car.
We got there just in time. Here’s the scene at the race start:
And here we are, probably less than a mile in, looking strong and having a nice time:
We’re not winning anything, this is just an excuse to exercise some new, pretty place. And, also, to have roadside support like this guy:
We ran through a lot of interesting light decorations that I’m sure pop nicely in the dark. There were speakers blaring thing from the trees — and of course the 12 Days of Christmas section was the one that wouldn’t end. We ran under giant decorations like snowflakes and wreaths and barns and this Santa’s Workshop kind of thing:
And then after six miles you found yourself trotting up the last little hill, turning right and running with Robin Lake on your left and the finish line ahead of you. We pronounced the course is relatively flat and fast. I’d like to really run it and see how slow I am. Ren did really well. It was her first 10K, ever, and she was very pleased with her performance and her time, as she should be. After the run:
It was windy and a little chilly, Somewhere between there and the finish line I got a full, complete, laughing, joyful hug of pride and pleasure and accomplishment. I could write a lot more about that, what that means or what it felt like, but the most important part is this: Don’t ever let go of those too early.
25
Oct 14
A day in the sun, night under the lights
Just a perfectly lovely day. I spent some time in a lawn chair with the sun peering through this tree. My head tilted back, aviators on and my eyes closed. Everyone thought I was sleeping. I could have been. I’m tired enough. But I was just enjoying the barest of breezes and that tinkling dance of the sun through the thinning shade.
A perfectly lovely day.
Two private school kids, separated by 800 miles, telling the same private school jokes to one another. We public schoolers can only pretend to know:
Penguin mascots make little sense anywhere, but certainly not in October in Alabama.
Spent the afternoon with friends. Football was played this evening and we watched it. Late into the night we enjoyed the company of friends and made it home in time for pizza at around 11 p.m. and more football.
No wonder I’m still tired. Tired, but pleased.
A perfectly lovely day.
